Posts Tagged ‘IDEO’

There has been tons of buzz around this role as it relates the holistic approach to team structure within advertising agencies—- advertising has changed so much, roles need to follow suit to meet the need. A need that combines strategy, creativity and technology — a hard core layer cake of flavors.

A creative technologist is a great example of that need, and a perfect example of a T-shaped individual.

The idea that many people, each doing a little thing, will produce something larger and more complex than they could have produced themselves is fading away.

T-shaped individuals can do much bigger things and think more broadly. They are looking for ideation beyond 1 honed skill set, and most importantly how to apply/execute it to meet a business objective of their clients and customers. They are people who are willing to experiment and take risks– in concert with rest of the world morphing around us in parallel.

Organizations like IDEO are realizing that when people are assigned to or choose roles to play in an organization they are often more creative and efficient than when they are confined to the duties prescribed by a title or position.

The vertical shaft of the “T” represents the depth of expertise/skill that a person exhibits, while the crossbar of the “T” represents the amount they are willing and able to collaborate.

People who are T-shaped are well-rounded and versatile. They are better able to contribute their ideas to a discussion and are able to take on a variety of roles. It’s no wonder that IDEO is one of the firms pioneering the change to formalize role-based work and reduce the work that is based on position or title.

I feel a Creative Technologist fills that need.

Rather than explain the role of a Creative Technologist– dig in to this post and preso from a great Blog called sermad — it’s beyond clarifying for inquiring minds who want to know. And those that want to adapt.

– When you get to slide 30 and the YouTube vid opens, use the SlideShare tools in the bottom of the box to keep advancing through the preso (vs. the side hover controls).

In my field of work, healthcare marketing and digital advertising, I am constantly looking for like-minded individuals to share and bounce ideas off. When looking at healthcare marketing in particular, 1 area of focus for me, there are a lot of ways to go about connecting with like minded individuals: Twitter in particular has connected to me people I would never otherwise have access to via curated groups of individuals like those found on Pharmatweetical and Ignite Health’s tweet list which was established early in 2009—this community has since certainly grown since, and deserves its own community for discussion.

Healthy Thinkers

A new platform was announced this week from Jon Richman, one with great intentions called Healthy Thinkers—first and foremost – awesome effort at corralling the healthcare marketing community together on 1 platform for like-minded discussions.

A differentiated effort from other social sharing platforms that curate like-minded individuals through groups/topics conversation (LinkedIn/Facebook.)

While LinkedIn and Facebook are both great platforms for community conversation— I rarely use either for “conversing” at length, about my professional field of interest and healthcare, so in my opinion there isn’t another platform that currently exists for this effort.

If we take a look at the effort behind the idea I have collected the following positive assumptions:

Seems like it’s an open social sharing network, and forum for intellectual collaboration via interested parties as it relates to healthcare engagement, promotional efforts and the change in policy (ie: guidelines, healthcare reform) or whatever other topics interest you.

These topics will foster UGC and social interaction around sharing best practices and contributing to solution based efforts.

We have seen success in this approach to the UGC model many times over through the last few years—and it’s boded very successful.

Also, most recently, IDEO’s recent resourcing community idea project called OPEN IDEO which basically does the same thing (but for many topics on “global good”)— Early in 2011 a group of global innovation leaders – known as the i20 – will meet for a global innovation summit. They are the principal drivers of national innovation strategies across thirty countries. OPEN IDEO allows users to influence their summit agenda but submitting their ideation and contributions will be used to help determine priorities and directions for the conference.

Each submitted agenda item shows the # of times it’s been viewed and if someone has applied an “applause” <like> to it.

This is also very similar to how SXSW panel picker content submissions are handled and voted on by interested parties as well.

Now, Path Of the Blue Eye is set up similarly in a social feel and is largely set up as resource center for sharing (content, documents, connections, etc) and does have a community built into it… but while valuable in its own right has less of a community generated content feel—more so an approach to content curation.

Path feels more like Facebook platform/interface with many levels but I don’t see a lot of UCG contribution on an open forum as intently defined by the approach of Healthy Thinkers. Nevertheless—great content and resource for us all looking to share amongst each other.

Healthy Differentiation

I’m all in for Healthy Thinkers- I think it’s a valiant effort by Jon and thank him for constantly raising the bar on bringing our community of bright thinkers together in one area.

As I’ve mentioned before here: There’s something to be said about a group of individuals who all have their own business objectives, teams, companies, brands, clients, products, healthcare practices and services, yet put that aside and embrace collaboration outside their everyday — a non-conformist approach to crowdsourcing, perhaps. Learning from each other about different approaches to “what good looks like”; contributing towards our own development for a route of success. It doesn’t get any better than that.

As long as this doesn’t turn into “I want to profess my greatest idea ever and hijack the site for better SEO for myself, but never contribute and build off other’s thinking” (which lets face it—it happens sometimes) then I think this will be a great endeavor to participate in. But as with any social sharing platform, the content is only as good as it’s user’s contributions.

So, it looks like we have some contributing to do.

I’m totally in and look forward to connecting, sharing and building with others.